The daily routine of an individual can involve interacting with multiple home appliances and/or electronic devices. Able-bodied individuals can choose the appliance and/or device that they want to engage with, at any given time, by directly manipulating the appliance and/or device through a variety of standard physical interfaces. Standard physical interfaces can include, but are not limited to, buttons, switches, keyboards, keypads, dials, levers, remote controls, and pointing devices such as touch screens.
However, some individuals can have physical impairments that prevent them from using these standard physical interfaces and they may instead have to rely on simplified switch input devices adapted to their unique physical abilities. A button is an example of a simplified switch input device. A switch interface can be provided to relay switching events from the simplified switch input device to a particular appliance. However, since different appliances often respond to different switching events, switch interfaces must typically be reconfigured for a particular appliance in order to control it. Generally, reconfiguration cannot be performed using the simplified switch input. Therefore, individuals with physical impairments may require the assistance of a third party in order to reconfigure a switch interface for use with an appliance that it is not currently configured to interact with.
Some conventional switch interfaces for able-bodied individuals enable the control of multiple electronic devices. For example, a wireless keyboard can be used to send text and/or commands to a variety of target electronic devices (e.g., mobile devices). However, the selection of a target electronic device is typically performed using an additional selection mechanism, such as a slider switch or selector wheel that is included in the wireless keyboard for the sole purpose of selecting a target appliance. Users who do not have the dexterity to manipulate the slider switch or selector wheel are not able to independently choose which electronic device they want to control with the keyboard.